


The Fractured Traveller

by Scribewraith



Category: The Authority
Genre: M/M, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-03 17:02:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribewraith/pseuds/Scribewraith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Traveller comes through the Bleed and challenges Apollo and Midnighter. Who is this stranger and what is the danger he brings with him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fractured Traveller

**Author's Note:**

  * For [W2](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=W2).



> Thank you to W2 for allowing me the opportunity to write in a fandom that I love but have been to scared to try - I hope you enjoy the story!  
> Thank you to Ivy for all your help with betaing, and to Tony and Ian for your encouragement with long chats about why The Authority rocks and doesn't.

 

 

Apollo curls his hand around the back of Midnighter's neck and brings his mouth closer. Midnighter grunts, it feels good, and then he's being swallowed whole. In that moment, hanging in space with nothing more than a force field and glass between them and the sun, Apollo comes.

Midnighter crawls back up the bed, stretching out over Apollo's sprawled form, and glides on top of him, thrusting against him. Apollo doesn't move for a second, still dazed as his orgasm shifts through his body and then he reaches up and, gripping Midnighter's arse, pulls him closer. Apollo rolls them over and leans down, kissing and reaching for Midnighter's cock. Midnighter stiffens, and then pushes him gently off, and it's in that moment that Apollo first hears the claxons sounding throughout The Carrier.

"Damn," Midnighter muffles against his neck, kissing it and then sitting up. He throws his legs off the side of the bed and reaches for his underwear, thrown on to the ground with the rest of their clothes when they finally thought they had time. Midnighter dresses quickly, Apollo less so, a quick adjustment of his body temperature and back again cleans him, but his uniform actually takes longer to get into, adjusting the lycra so it doesn't pinch.

Midnighter is already at the door, asking for information before Apollo has a chance to find his feet properly but he's there in time to stop Midnighter's momentum when he crashes into the closed door.

"Door." It's a mutual command, quick and to the point but The Carrier still doesn't respond. They're trapped in the room with no idea of what's going on. In seconds Midnighter has calculated all of their options and he says, glancing towards the window, "I can hold my breath for two minutes."

Apollo nods and runs to the window, leaping with all his strength behind him, turning and somersaulting, smashing the glass out and reaching out, ready to catch Midnighter after the vacuum drags him out of the room, flinging the furnishings and broken glass into space around them.

Apollo can fly through space, twist and turn, and he's ready to fly them back to Earth or better yet into the heart of The Carrier where Angela is looking after Jenny. The first choice is to save Jenny, The Carrier, The Authority: it's their job and their family, but they will go underground again if they have to. It worked for Midnighter when they'd been replaced and it had worked for them when Bendix had betrayed them. However the choice is taken out of his - out of their - hands when he smashes not into space but into The Bleed. He should be able to move, with less force maybe, but instead Apollo is frozen in place, tentacled energy wrapping itself around his arms and legs holding him in place. Midnighter breaks his leap, having aimed for Apollo as the glass broke, and lands on their bedroom floor.

"Apollo."

The voice is calm and controlled - dismissive - and Apollo looks around desperately for the source. Midnighter has crouched down, making himself into as small a target as possible while he waits for the threat to make itself known. Apollo raises his temperature slightly trying to burn at whatever is holding him but it has no effect. Midnighter moves, swinging his leg out, and barely misses the intruder.

The air around the intruder sizzles and blurs as it fades in and out giving Apollo only glimpses of its form as Midnighter hits and punches and kicks into the air around him and into the body as it emerges and disappears. Apollo tries to recognise the creature - humanoid, six feet tall - but it's slipping in and out of focus too fast to make out clearly. Apollo knows that with each movement that Midnighter makes he is collating more data, calculating probabilities and patterns until in one movement he will be able to - there it is. The intruder is slammed against their wall, held in place with its throat.

"Let Apollo go." Midnighter growls at the body now subdued in his hands. Apollo feels The Bleed let go of him and he slips back onto the deck of their room. He stands behind Midnighter and knows that he's been calculated and adjusted for.

"What have you done to The Carrier?" Apollo asks. He takes a good look at the creature and realises that it's human, probably male, but the black body suit it wears covers any distinguishing features. It's not completely one piece so he reaches past Midnighter and pulls at the mask. It comes off easily, a knot tying it at the back and the face that emerges is both familiar and yet not: eyes that he sees in the mirror every morning, a jaw that he's rested his hand against before going to sleep. He's not sure what he should think of this but he's becoming immune to the surprises that being a part of The Authority throws at him, so he just steps back to wait for the explanation.

"Nothing, nothing," the voice is less sinister, more effacing, "Well everything - but nothing that _you_ can fix." He's staring directly at Apollo as he says this. Midnighter's grip tightens and the man coughs against the pressure, "You can let me go," he gasps, "I won't fight anymore. You won." He sounds like he's not sure if he should be delighted or upset at his loss. Midnighter lets him go, not stepping back, and the man crumples against the wall for a second before standing taller and bowing his head low to Midnighter. Apollo wonders if Midnighter has registered what he's seen in this stranger.

"I am The Doctor, or rather I am my reality's Doctor and we need your help."

Apollo wants to burst into laughter at the audacity of the young man in front of them. He has just frozen The Carrier, beaten up his lover, and tied him to The Bleed and _he_ wants their help. It's not actually that he might be more powerful, that he should be able to deal with most situations himself - or that his own reality obviously has an Authority of its own - which makes Apollo question the necessity, it's the method he used to attract their attention. When they had needed help to evacuate the civilians from Earth, they had gone hat in hand to ask for the help.

"Door," he says, not bothering to respond to the absurd request and when The Carrier still doesn't respond he glares at their visitor, and then, when the man gestures with his hand, Apollo repeats himself. This time it works. Apollo turns, and goes through the Door to look for Jenny. He doesn't really care whether they follow him, Midnighter can look after himself, and The Doctor is a supplicant, and can fall to their terms, if they're even going to bother helping.

Jenny is playing at Angie's feet, neither of them seem to have noticed anything wrong and he wonders about the Claxons they heard before they were invaded but he realises their Doctor can manipulate reality in such a way that trapping the two of them into what must have effectively been a battle sim would be as easy as snapping fingers. He reaches down and picks up Jenny, swinging her up above his head and then back into his arms. Angie grins when she sees him. She doesn't disconnect from The Carrier but says, "finished already?"

"Not quite." He says, pointing over her shoulder to the second Door that has opened, spilling Midnighter and the other Doctor into the room.

"In our reality we didn't have The Carrier," he's saying to Midnighter. "It might have made a difference." Their guest realises where he's been brought, and he bows to Angie. "Engineer." He is formal again. Apollo wonders for a second what he's done to make the kid dislike him so and then he realises that it's actually nothing to do with him. Maybe the Apollo in his reality eats babies, it's not him but stranger things have happened.

"Uh, Midnighter? Apollo?" Angie is looking at them for an explanation - they're both too calm for the intruder to be a threat but she doesn't know what's going on.

"Angie, this is The Doctor," Apollo introduces off handedly. "I think that we might need Jack, and our Doctor, if you can find him. Hell, get Swift, let's make it a team meeting." He's still a bit buzzed at being interrupted, and from the adrenaline from the fight, the moment of fear that he always quashes as Midnighter begins a battle, the worry that this time he mightn't make it. He knows, rationally, that there's very little that could beat Midnighter; that could leave him for dead in a way that there's no coming back from, but in that first second of the battle Apollo always fears it

Jack and Swift join them seconds after Angie has called them, and The Doctor, _their Doctor_ , follows a couple of minutes later.

"What did you wake me up for?" The Doctor asks. "I was having this dream about my wife and, uh, who are you. You don't feel right. Oh my god, you're..." He's looking between Apollo and Midnighter as he pauses and then changes the subject, "you're me. Well, not me obviously, but me somewhere else."

The new Doctor, bows again and Apollo is really beginning to take this personally, "It might be easier if you call me The Traveller. Two Doctor's are a little confusing."

"Tell me about it," Midnighter whispers under his breath and Apollo turns to share a grin.

"Jack Hawksmoor," Jack hold his hand out to The Traveller who looks confused for a second and then reaches out to take it going with the motion as Jack shakes. "So why don't you tell us what you're doing here."

The Traveller bows quickly and starts to explain: "At the turn of the Millenium we were invaded. As you know," nodding at The Doctor, "God came home. Sparks killed it, dying in the process, but not before it seeded our collective unconscious."

"That's not what happened here," Jack says, folding his arms. "It tried to seed the Earth, terraform it, if you will, and return it back to it's primordial state but we cleaned it and then our Sparks killed it by electrocuting it's brain. Nothing happened to our collective consciousness. Right, Doctor?" The Doctor nods looking at the newcomer curiously. "So how did that happen then?"

"It didn't seed our planet, it wasn't exactly the same creature that created your Earth. It wanted it's home back and it struck at our weakest point, The Doctor. Me. The Doctor before me died in the first volley and I was activated and as I entered the Garden of Ancestral memory for the first time, something, it, hitchhiked a ride."

"It waited until we had recovered and then it began to grow. It doesn't seem to care that we had killed the Mother." The Traveller ducks his head and then straightens looking into their eyes as he continues, "the effects were subtle at first and I should have noticed something." He glances at Midnighter again, looking for his reaction but Apollo knows that his face will be unreadable, passive. "It began to be harder to access The Garden, and the others began to change. They became more destructive. Winter killed himself. Hawksmoor couldn't connect to the city. And then the people. There are doomsday cults everywhere and those that don't kill themselves are performing bodily mutations, transforming themselves. They are all becoming God."

"I hid. I am not proud, but I thought the best way to save everyone would be to find someone who could help. A world where you weren't defeated by God." He looks young as he stands in front of them, waiting for a sentence or proclamation that will save him and his world. Nothing he's heard so far impresses Apollo and a quick glance around the team shows that nobody else is eager to jump in the fray and save another world - and that's without the knowledge of the way that The Traveller had trapped Apollo and Midnighter in their room.

Jack stands, arms crossed, leaning back like he's humouring their guest and asks, "Well, what do you think we can do?" For a brief second there's a flicker of emotion in The Traveller's face, surprise and anger but it disappears behind a familiar passive mask.

"And why should we help?" The Doctor asks.

The Traveller looks around at the unsympathetic faces gathered around him and takes a breath. "Because it could do this to you." There's bitterness and anger tied together, "because now that I'm here it _will_ this to you."

In a movement Midnighter has him back against a wall. "What have you done?"

"Nothing, nothing." The Traveller throws his hands up as if to wave off further attack, ineffectively as Midnighter's grip tightens against his chest. "You are not the first that I have tried to ask for help, you're the first to defeat me when I come through, but not the first to be asked."

"Is that what you were doing to us then - testing?" Apollo asks. He's not expecting an answer and isn't surprised when he doesn't get one.

"What?" Jack asks.

"We were trapped in our room by our guest. He used The Bleed." Apollo nods his head at Midnighter unconsciously, "but he's right Midnighter did defeat him. Otherwise we wouldn't have brought him anywhere near Jenny. He seemed harmless enough."

Jack looks at him for a second, seeing what he needs to, and then turns back to their guest. "Okay, what do you think it's going to do to us?"

"It will use me as a conduit to your collective unconscious and then it will tear your world to pieces from the inside."

"Can it do that?" Jack's looking at The Doctor as he asks.

"Possibly." The Doctor blinks and then shrugs. "Probably. If the God can plant suggestions it could warp the world like when the Surgeon sold of the Garden. And our visitor would have access - he could be a Trojan."

"Right," says Jack. "Well I guess we'll have to do something about it. You," he points at The Traveller, "are staying here. We still have cells, somewhere. But first you can kindly point us at your reality and we'll clean up your mess."

There's a look of relief on The Traveller's face and he replies, "Of course. I can send you through now if you like."

Jack nods. "Shen and Angie will you kindly take care of our guest. Doctor, Apollo, Midnighter you're with me." A Door opens in front of them, not quite the golden glow that they've become used to but similar enough that they recognise what it is. "If we don't come back in the next half hour you know what to do."

They step through and they appear at the top of a gorge, like the Grand Canyon with slight differences, mesa and buttes in not quite the right places. The view is spectacular but what draws their attention are the piles of bodies burning, large enough to see from where they stand. Apollo gasps. He's used to seeing horrors by now but this is like something out of Dante's Inferno or from a badly illustrated guide to Hell. Even Jack has covered his mouth to cope with the stench.

"Da." There's a voice from behind them and Apollo turns back to the Door to see it close with Jenny on this side. Midnighter gets to her first and picks her up.

"Well," says Jack, "that changes things. Are we stuck here?"

The Doctor replies, stretching his senses, "I think so, at least I can't find a way home," he pauses, and then grins, "but I can get us into the Garden of the Ancestors."

"That sounds like a start," Jack gestures as if to say go ahead and in a breath they are taken from the red of the burning desert and submerged in a dark cave-like environment. "Apollo, can you bring us any light?" Jack asks, and slowly the room begins to light up.

"Well, that's not what I expected."

This is no garden, and it's no tentacled nightmare like the landscape that their God had tried to create. Instead it's a vast wasteland, a barren womb, with no sign of life.

"Ah, have you been brought here to defeat me?" The voice comes from all around them, slowly merging from the shadows into a form that is instantly recognisable.

"Are you serious?" It's Midnighter who says what they're all thinking. The Doctor starts chuckling and then all the others burst into laughter.

Standing in front of them is the perfect incarnation of a red-horned, red-skinned, goat-hoofed Devil. "We're supposed to be scared of God's right hand adversary?" Midnighter looks over and catches Apollo's eye, "I think _our_ God was scarier." Apollo grins back

"Shall I take this?" Midnighter asks Jack, who just nods. Midnighter passes Jenny to Apollo and then steps up to face The Devil.

In three movements - a kick, a lunge and then a punch - Midnighter has the Devil crushed at his feet. It starts to shift, to try and change form but The Doctor creates a cage around it. It looks like a monkey in a zoo, and Apollo knows they're all tempted to poke at it and offer bananas but he's wary. This was too easy. Why would The Traveller need to come to their world to find someone else to defeat this creature?

"Bad," Jenny says. She turns across Apollo's shoulder and points at The Devil. "Better," she says, and the energy that is always present coursing through her body leaps from her eyes and across to the iron cage. The Devil is electrocuted and burnt, not unlike the bodies that they had left behind in the desert.

With his death, there is an immediate change in the environment around them. Light pours in and first grass and then flowers and trees begin to grow around them. A ripple of water becomes a creek and then a river washing away the dust and dirt from the barren wasteland - The Garden becomes a paradise again. Jenny giggles with delight, reaching out to play with flowers and then leaves as they drop from the trees living through their lives in hyper speed.

As The Garden regains its form The Ancestors begin to fade back into existence. First the oldest, babbling in languages too old to understand and then the more recent incarnations of The Doctor join them.

"Thank you." The spokesperson looks enough like their Doctor - red hair, glasses - but his suit was impeccable compared to the bright costume that the Jeroen in their reality wore. This is enough for Apollo to believe that this is actually another reality. He had begun to have suspicions that this might have been another construct developed for some new test by The Traveller. The Devil imagery was a bit cliché.

"You have freed us from the madness, and we are greatful. Is there some way we can help you?" The spokesperson continues.

"Yes, tell us what happened here," Jack demands.

"God came and tore our world apart."

"Yes, we've got that bit," Jack is starting to sound a bit pissed off, and Apollo can feel the tension in Midnighter's body where he stands next to him. Jenny, fortunately is still distracted by the changes in The Garden around her.

"I was killed in the first volley, my mind a little distracted when we were attacked," he grins as if it was a good memory, "and then Trent was called to become The Doctor." He sighs, "He wasn't broken at first and with Sparks help we defeated the invaders. I think it may have been that death that started it all - Trent was connected to Sparks when he died. It's not an easy thing to experience at anytime but he'd just been transformed from mere mortal to one of the most powerful beings on the planet, battled gods and then..."

"He started to ask about resurrecting people and I didn't think of anything of it because it would be mixed in with requests for other knowledge which would be needed at the time. It didn't occur to us to wonder that he was always asking about whether he could find his father either." There's a flicker of a glance towards Midnighter at this, like he recognizes the jawline, too.

"His mother started to worry about him and confronted him about his obsession." This time the glance is towards him and Apollo clicks on what had been bugging him about the similarities in The Traveller's face. There had been a small residual worry that Bendix, or somebody, had combined their DNA in some kind of clone designed to destroy them.

"He killed her."

It's not just Apollo who gasps at this and he's so used to not being touched by Midnighter in public that the hand wrapped around his wrist comes as a slight shock instead of the comfort that is intended - or maybe it's actually reassurance that Midnighter seeks. Apollo places his hand over the back of Midnighter's and the feel of leather is actually a comfort against his skin. It doesn't last long, the both pull away, gently, and instead Midnighter places his hand on Jenny's back, leaving it there.

"It broke his mind. He did this to the world, turning it into Hell and Purgatory, and since then he's been looking. We weren't sure what for but now that you're here, I think we know."

He looks directly at Midnighter and Apollo before saying: "You must kill him. You must set him free."

Midnighter knows how to kill people - it is what he was built for and while The Traveller is not their child, not born from their bodies, he is something they never thought they would be able to have. They've never talked about it, Jenny is a blessing, and they have each other. Midnighter nods. He will do it. It'll be swift and painless, Apollo knows, nothing else needs to be said.

There is a look of gratitude on the spokesperson's face before he says: "I will send you home now."

There is no motion, no signal, just a sudden jolt of the metal floor beneath them and they're all back where they started in The Carrier. A second has passed, they can see the flicker of the Door they traveled through closing in front of them as The Traveller gestures it closed. Jenny's foot fades out of view as she follows them and Shen leaps to grab her, nearly falling onto the ground as the Door fades out. Her wings save her from an inglorious bump, righting her with unconscious movements of her muscles. "Fuck," Shen says bringing her hands to her hips.

"It's okay. She's safe." Apollo says, grateful that he'd seen them try and pull Jenny out of harm's way. Angie and Shen jump guiltily turning to face them. Their eyes widen as Midnighter takes three strides and takes The Traveller in his grip. He has no time to react, none of his ability to mold reality will save him, and in that moment, death staring him in his face, there is a look of relief on his face.

"I'm sorry," Midnighter says and then with a controlled movement he crushes The Traveller's throat. It's over.

Apollo puts Jenny down and steps towards Midnighter and then stops. There is a look in his eyes, grief, and then he says quietly, so that only Apollo can hear, "he had your eyes." Apollo nods. There's nothing he can say to that, he had seen it too.

 


End file.
